Took delivery of an HTC Vive a couple days ago. After playing for about 8+ hours now, I can safely say that this is the most impressive piece of technology I've ever tried. And it's easily the single most revolutionary gaming device I've ever used.

It impossible to put into words what it feels like to be inside a video game. Because that's exactly what it's like: you're inside the video game. Everything I've tried in the past--stereoscopic glasses, triple monitor setups, 100 inch high def projector screens--nothing comes close to how completely immersive this is.

Case in point, I was playing a virtual mini-golf game. I hit the ball causing it to bounce back to where I was standing. I instinctively jumped out of the way to avoid the ball hitting me; the virtual ball that isn't even real. My brain had been completely tricked.

The motion control in particular is exceptional. It lends a level of intuition to gaming that I've never experienced outside of specialized controllers (i.e. driving wheels, etc). For example, playing a zombie shooter, I found myself aiming down the pistol sight and closing one eye to aim. In a regular video game this would require some button/mouse combo to execute. In VR, I literally just aimed down the sights. To not even have to think about how to do something like that is a revelation. And the haptic feedback in the controllers add to the immersion even further. Being able to physically feel virtual interactions is just bonkers.

The sense of scale and distance in VR is incredible. To actually see characters and environments as life-sized... I can't even begin to describe what it's like. In the aforementioned zombie game, both times I attempted to play it, it left me shaking in fear. Being attacked by life-sized zombies and monsters is the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a game. I can legitimately say this is the first time a game has made me fear for my personal safety.

The biggest drawback thus far is how exhausting this experience has been. Playing the more action oriented games, I find myself sweating after a good half-hour or so. I couldn't even imagine trying to do a marathon gaming session for several hours in a row. But it's been worth it; so incredibly worth it.

I really hope this catches on; no other gaming experience comes close to this.

Ordered directly from HTC (https://www.htcvive.com/). I preordered back at the beginning of March. They're currently backordered by about 2 months (current orders will ship in June).

Total cost was about $1300 Canadian (inc tax + shipping). The price was the biggest sticking point and I nearly canceled my order a couple times. Having now tried it, I'd order it again in a heartbeat.

I really like the Lab, I would like to see it even get expanded on, it would be cool if it was even a portal for all other games and a way to see other Vive users walk around online. The long bow tower defense game I find particularly fun, it is way too short and leaves my wanting more.

Budget Cuts Demo is also a really good example on how to make a full game that feels right in VR

Space Pirates Trainer is a real fun arcade shooter.

So far those are probably my 3 go to games that I will show friends and family VR for the first time.

I really like the Lab, I would like to see it even get expanded on, it would be cool if it was even a portal for all other games and a way to see other Vive users walk around online. The long bow tower defense game I find particularly fun, it is way too short and leaves my wanting more.

I love that tower defense game in the Lab! What impressed me most about it was how intuitive and natural it felt to shoot a bow-and-arrow in VR. I really hope we see a full-length game come of that.

Xortex is incredibly fun too. Just the feeling of playing a bullet hell shooter with little spaceships flying all around you is just bonkers. Well, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about

Virtual mini golf? You'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to play the real thing.

And you paid $2k for the privilege?

Whatever floats your boat.

There's a wee bit more to VR than that, dude

Thus far, I've:

- Had a face-to-face encounter with an 80-foot blue whale- Blasted robotic drones in a sci-fi spaceport while dodging lasers Matrix-style- Explored a fantasy dungeon while physically dodging arrows and sword-fighting with skeletons- Felt like a kid with a magical toyset as I stood above a miniature airport as tiny airplanes and helicopters flew around my head- Nearly crapped my pants at coming face-to-face with life-sized zombies and monsters- Zoomed through the solar system and just marveled at the sheer scale and majesty of it all; seeing a baseball sized Earth floating in front of my face and then scaling it up the size of a building completely blew my mind

This is the single coolest technological thing I've ever experienced. It's like all the fantasy and sci-movies of my childhood brought to life.

Virtual mini golf? You'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to play the real thing.

And you paid $2k for the privilege?

Whatever floats your boat.

There's a wee bit more to VR than that, dude

Thus far, I've:

- Had a face-to-face encounter with an 80-foot blue whale- Blasted robotic drones in a sci-fi spaceport while dodging lasers Matrix-style- Explored a fantasy dungeon while physically dodging arrows and sword-fighting with skeletons- Felt like a kid with a magical toyset as I stood above a miniature airport as tiny airplanes and helicopters flew around my head- Nearly crapped my pants at coming face-to-face with life-sized zombies and monsters- Zoomed through the solar system and just marveled at the sheer scale and majesty of it all; seeing a baseball sized Earth floating in front of my face and then scaling it up the size of a building completely blew my mind

This is the single coolest technological thing I've ever experienced. It's like all the fantasy and sci-movies of my childhood brought to life.

I think you are going to have to admit that there is a lot of novelty going on there man. You are excited about it now, but let's see how much you enjoy it in a few months time. I've messed with the phone adaptors because ..... well ..... they are only 20 bucks and while stuff is certainly impressive, it isn't $2000 impressive. There's the VR experience and then there is gaming. VR is good for experiences, but it's a crap method of gaming for the reasons I've mentioned countless times in other threads... it just isn't ready yet. Hey if you've got money to burn though I don't see the harm. You could send the money to me though... I could find a better use for it.

I think you are going to have to admit that there is a lot of novelty going on there man. You are excited about it now, but let's see how much you enjoy it in a few months time.

Oh, I'll admit there's a novelty factor. But that doesn't really take away from the impressiveness of what VR is capable of. My biggest fear getting a VR headset was it wouldn't live up to the expectations. But it's blown them out of the water.

As I said in the OP, the biggest issue I've run into is sheer exhaustion. In fact, I took a day off from VR gaming today because I need a break to recover both physically and mentally.

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I've messed with the phone adaptors because ..... well ..... they are only 20 bucks and while stuff is certainly impressive, it isn't $2000 impressive.

Well, duh. Smartphones were never intended to be VR devices. I've tried VR on my phone as well and it suffered from extreme lag in the tracking of movement and limited frame rate.

But a proper VR device like the Vive is another story altogether. The tracking feels 1:1. Frame rate is 90 FPS. And I cannot overstate the importance of motion controllers and how incredible they are for VR.

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There's the VR experience and then there is gaming. VR is good for experiences, but it's a crap method of gaming for the reasons I've mentioned countless times in other threads... it just isn't ready yet.

Yes it is. The biggest technological limitation is the visual fidelity of the displays. The resolution is a step backwards from gaming on an LCD monitor; in VR it feels a bit more like gaming on an older CRT screen. But it's hardly like CRT screens got in the way of video games.

The motion tracking feels perfect. Physical comfort has been fine; at no point has the headset felt too heavy or awkward. You are tethered to your PC via a cable, but even that isn't a hindrance in most cases. Haven`t felt motion sickness once.

In terms of actual gaming, there is a lot that works in VR. Cockpit sims are a no-brainer; people have already put 100+ hours into VR gaming in Elite: Dangerous, Eurotruck Simulator, DCS World, etc. Gallery/arcade style shooters are another no brainer. Audio Shield has shown that rhythm games can work extremely well. Horror titles are intense and might even be too scary in VR.

God sims and strategy games are something I wouldn't have thought would work in VR. But having had a taste of that with Final Approach, there is tremendous potential for those genres. A SimCity or Populous-style game in VR would be incredible.

In fact, the one style of gaming that does pose a challenge is the free-roaming first-person games like Call of Duty or Skyrim due to motion sickness. Developers have already come up with workarounds, such as teleportation for movement. It works far better than I thought it would. I think cover-shooters like Gears of War might work well in VR; we're kinda already seeing that with Hover Junkers.

I hope you get to try this for yourself one day. I think it will shatter a lot of your preconceptions. I know it did to mine.

Face it, many people here have spent more than that on an arcade cab that they use about as much as they would use this, so it isn't really unreasonable. As time goes on I think this will become less of a novelty than having an original arcade cab in your house..

Face it, many people here have spent more than that on an arcade cab that they use about as much as they would use this, so it isn't really unreasonable. As time goes on I think this will become less of a novelty than having an original arcade cab in your house..

Oh absolutely. Having gamed for over 30 years; arcades, computers, consoles, mobile... this blows it all out of the water. There is nothing quite like feeling like you are inside the game.

website shows "in stock" when you choose U.S.A. but I didn't go on to the other checkout screens..

It's misleading and a problem with Digital River's site. In the description fields, they have "Expected to ship around June 2016" right in the middle of it. And if you're on mobile, that doesn't even show up. More than one person's been tricked into thinking it's in stock as in it'll ship right away.

Lack of tactile feedback is going to kill these things. Anyone else remember how much sword fighting and punching with the Wii controllers sucked?

Can't speak for other controllers, but the Vive controllers do have haptic feedback. That coupled with seeing in-game what you are meant to be holding (i.e. gun, flashlight, knife, whatever), makes it a whole different experience than waving around a Wii remote.

Lack of tactile feedback is going to kill these things. Anyone else remember how much sword fighting and punching with the Wii controllers sucked?

And speaking of sucking, if I'm paying $500 for a gimmick device for a PS4, I want a semi-convincing hummer from Lara Croft. A fleshlight with a Dualshock 4 duct taped to it does not count.

I hate to defend a doa gimmick like high end vr, but sword fighting on the wii was amazing. Felt great with near 1:1 experiences like Skyward Sword and wii sports resort and was even kind of fun on "waggle to hit" games like twilight princess and no more heroes. Punching sucked but that's because the sensors weren't designed to detect that type of movement accurately. They did have a bit of haptic feedback as well... at least the wii motion plus games.

I totally agree with you that it didn't give enough feedback for use with a vr headset though. For that to work there would have to be some way to physically stop your hand, which, short of st:tng's holodeck, just isn't possible.

I totally agree with you that it didn't give enough feedback for use with a vr headset though. For that to work there would have to be some way to physically stop your hand, which, short of st:tng's holodeck, just isn't possible.

You might be surprised. The funny thing about VR is I'm finding if you trick enough of the brain into thinking what you are experiencing is real, it fills in the missing gaps on its own.

This is why in VR, when encountering physical objects, your brain wants to treat them as physical. So it results in a really weird feeling to be able to move through physical objects in VR. Conversely, people end up thinking that VR objects are physical and react accordingly (like trying to lean or sit on virtual furniture).

It's hard to fully appreciate without experiencing it first hand. But it's far beyond using stuff like Wii remotes or other non-VR motion controls.

There are only three ways to do it. One is to create "solid holograms" like the holodeck..... that just isn't happening anytime soon considering we can't even project a 3d image and make it look convincing. Another is to wear a suit that can lock your joints at will... perhaps via solenoids or something. It's possible but man would it be clunky and I don't even know how 3d would work when you are expected to walk and move around.... you'd be knocking over furniture left and right... it certainly wouldn't be a home solution. The third is direct access to the brain. We are light years away from that and even if we weren't I'm sure as hell not allowing a game company to access my brain considering half the games released today are so shoddily coded that they need 20 patches before they are even playable.

You are excited about it now, but let's see how much you enjoy it in a few months time.

Thought I'd *bump* this thread because I've now had my Vive for 2 months now. In that time I've:

1) Played nothing but VR games;2) Used it almost every single day; and,3) It's still the most revolutionary gaming device I've ever used.

While the initial VR novelty has worn off (i.e. I no longer stand there with mouth agape every time I put it on), the awesomeness of the VR experience has not. It's so far beyond the experience of sitting in front of a computer monitor with a keyboard/mouse, that I legitimately don't know how I'm going to go back to regular gaming.

This guy has studied VR for over 10 years in detail. Note how he brings up all the concerns I've previously talked about and states that the practical applications are pretty limited in gaming, with again, the same scenarios I talked about being the most compatible.

This guy has studied VR for over 10 years in detail. Note how he brings up all the concerns I've previously talked about and states that the practical applications are pretty limited in gaming, with again, the same scenarios I talked about being the most compatible.

Watched that video and it honestly doesn't seem like that guy has tried modern VR systems (or at the very least, his experience with them sounds limited). I especially don't think he's tried the Vive.

For one, he claims that they are best for cockpit style games. In my experience, while they are amazing in VR for certain aspects, the resolution is less ideal. For example in most racing games you are staring into the distance, but the current resolution limitations make it hard to make out detail. So anticipating turns as well as even reading your own dash becomes more challenging in VR. Once we get the next gen with higher resolution, they'll be much better for cockpit games.

VR w/ room-scale and motion control is best for arcade style action games particularly gallery shooters. Games like Space Pirate Trainer, Holopoint, Zen Blade, Zombie Training Simulator, etc, are amazing in VR. FPS games also work depending on the mechanics. Hover Junkers for example is a great example of an FPS that worked around the movement problem in VR by having you zoom around on a hover ship. It works extremely well.

Room-scale and motion control also works well for strategy games or god games. Imagine playing a space RTS except instead of seeing everything on a monitor, you have everything floating around you like a hologram. Or having your entire floor represent a map and you can move around it picking up units or physically directing actions. It's like having a life-sized toy set that's come to life. That's what is possible in modern VR.

And finally, genres like horror, stealth and adventure work extremely well in VR as well. The horror experience is amped up considerably in VR, when you start cutting off your senses from the outside world. Budget Cuts has proven that stealth games can be incredible in VR when your full body is involved in the experience of moving and hiding. And adventure games are taken to a new level when you are physically walking around a virtual room and interacting with objects.

TL/DR: I have a hard time trusting that guy's VR experience. It sounds like most of his experience is with much older VR systems.

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VR is probably not the future.

It is. Gamers have been wanting to be inside the video game since video games were invented. VR achieves that.

Anyone using anything other than current VR devices to conclude whether it is a viable platform should be disregarded. That would be like saying that I have done all the research on jetpacks from the 60's up until 2010 and concluded that they are never going to be more than garage inventor's crazy ideas...

If you think the tech from the last 5 years is getting really cool, wait another 5 years.. jetpacks, robots, biomechanical devices, VR, etc. are all turning up at an accelerating rate, and they all have massive commercial appeal. Hell, I even know a guy who have bought a flying car already.

Remember, home computers cost thousands of dollars in the late 70's and early 80's, and most people thought they would never take off. They were ridiculously expensive and aside from a novelty, they didn't seem to have any real world use. Today nearly every man, woman, and child in the U.S. carries one in their pocket. And back then, few people had been dreaming of owning one for several decades before they became available.

I was in on the OR from it's first Kickstarter Campaign and Howard and I disagreed on how it would play out. I own the latest HTC Vive and OR sets and the Vive is superior and fantastic. Being one of the original backers, I got a chance to play Star Trek Bridge Crew and it's everything I thought it would be, a fantastically enriching experience where VR is utilized exactly how I hoped it would be. I still have high hopes for VR and if they make more games like Bridge crew, it's going to be a blast.